mini-album // Intercom
Intercom was a free mini-LP made available
to new subscribers to the Komputer email distribution
list, back when their own website was operational. Consisting of
five exclusive tracks, Intercom continues Simon
Leonard and David Baker's ongoing obsession
with Kraftwerk and other proponents of early electronic
pop music.
Opening with 'Finale', the track finds the duo hitching
sinister, buzzing synths to pulsing drum machines that about three
quarters of the way through begin to sound vaguely junglist. 'Tell
Tale' is altogether more subtle, starting with echoing percussion
and rattling around without necessarily needing to head anywhere
in particular. 'First Edition 100' sounds like Raymond Scott's
synths duetting with Aphex Twin or Autechre's
crunchy distorted beats, a combination which always sounds great
in my imagination.
'Sexy Dog' is a rapid-fire track which, if its beats
were a bit more pronounced, could work as an old 'ardcore track.
As it happens, the addition of a very funk-guitar-sounding synth
section rescues this from 1992 malaise. The stately 'Intercom',
with its robotic vocoder vocals is probably the most Kraftwerk track
of all five, especially when the pleasant synth arpeggiations kick
in. In a blind listening test you'd swear it was some sort of hitherto
unreleased Hütter / Bartos vignette.
i:
1. Finale
2. Tell Tale
3. First Edition 100
4. Sexy Dog
5. Intercom
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